The invention generally relates to systems and methods for displaying traffic information on a display unit. In particular, the disclosed embodiments relate to systems and methods for displaying air traffic on a traffic display unit, such as a navigation display located in the cockpit or on the flight deck of an aircraft, or a traffic display unit at a controller's station on the ground.
Modern aircraft typically include cockpit displays that are controlled by an information system. Cockpit displays include the basic displays that are supplied with the aircraft, and other add-on displays which vary in their degree of integration with the physical aircraft structure and aircraft systems. In a modern electronic cockpit, the flight instruments typically include a so-called “navigation display”. A navigation display (which may be adjacent to the primary flight display) along with navigational information may show the current position of all aircraft within the display range and information. Current implementations of a navigation display range selection are typically in whole number increments (for example, 640, 320, 160, 80, 40, 20, and 10 nautical mile ranges) such that intermediate display range selections between the whole number increments are not utilized.
On existing navigation displays onboard many aircraft, the flight crew does not know if other airplanes represented by non-directional symbols on the display are turning or going straight. The flight crew has limited information about airplane traffic and has to monitor the traffic to determine its direction of travel.
With the introduction of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology for display of traffic in the flight deck, a typical display only provides the instantaneous heading/track (i.e., the direction of travel at that instant) of each other airplane. The typical navigation display with this new technology does not provide any information on the current state of the other airplane, i.e., whether it is turning or going straight. The only method available to the flight crew to determine the track of other airplanes is to constantly monitor the movement of each traffic symbol relative to the ownship symbol on the navigation display and estimate their future positions to evaluate if there is a potential conflict between ownship and other traffic.
The term “traffic display unit” will be used hereinafter to refer to display units that display symbology representing vehicular traffic of interest to a display unit viewer. Thus the term “traffic display unit”, as used herein, includes navigation displays and other types of traffic display units onboard aircraft, as well as traffic display units onboard vehicles other than aircraft and traffic display units located at ground-based traffic controllers' stations.
There is a need for systems and methods for displaying the current trends (i.e., turning or going straight) or future positions of vehicles of interest to a display unit viewer. In particular, it is desirable that electronic traffic display units be able to display easily interpretable symbology indicating the current trends or future positions of traffic vehicles of interest so that potential conflicts can be identified by the viewer.